Before we get into this, I’d like to say that I’ve never (before this) liked any novel that had anything to do with Sci-fi. I have no idea why, but the genre just isn’t my cup of tea. However, I do enjoy movies of the same genre. In fact, I love them.

On the other hand, Sidney Sheldon managed to keep me hooked – yet again – to The Doomsday Conspiracy.

So this book isn’t entirely a science fiction, it’s more of mystery and a thriller which made the story seem so real. In fact, so real that I’m still searching for more books or even videos that talk about similar events that take place in this book.

The protagonist – Robert Bellamy is a Commander in the US Naval Intelligence who is assigned this secret mission that commences in Switzerland, takes him to different locations on the globe, and brings him back to where it all started. For Robert, this was to be his last mission because he had decided to quit later. The NSA had similar plans for him but in an entirely different way. It was going to be his last mission. And his last day.

Robert is sent to Switzerland to track down ten witnesses to a – supposedly materialised – weather balloon carrying sensitive information that crashed there. He’s been ordered not to get in touch with anyone but these witnesses and report to the authorities as and when he finds them. He isn’t equipped with any other knowledge other than the area where this so called weather balloon was.

Once the mission starts, it folds into barbaric ways of the authorities involved in covering up this situation that – in their heads – would cause a global panic. Something that Robert discovers only after he’s tracked down the last witness.

Fortunately for him, there aren’t just 10 of them but 11. The last one proves to save him from an order that now the officials had sent to all the governments and officials for him. Orders to Terminate.

So the entire novel is based on this particular mission. And oh! The twists and turns!

I think it’s a great novel and is well written. It’s simple and straight. Robert’s character is very realistic and seems human enough in the way he’s described. My heart aches for him when he loses his love to his ever so stressful professional life, and it also rejoices when they re-unite.

I think the reasons I liked this book and that it intrigued me so, are : 1. That it had a lot of things based on some actual research work ( which I learnt on reading the author’s note – which honestly is so fascinating! To find a list of people who mysteriously died, as the characters in this book, in reality is so scary!) and 2. Because maybe I’m open to a possibility that ours isn’t the only planet to have life and civilisation on it. I mean, our galaxy’s pretty big and there even bigger ones than ours. So how could we be the only beings?